Politics | Grist

Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation 6
Posted 5 days, 10 hours ago By Michael A. Livermore This Friday is the deadline for public comments on the stricter vehicle efficiency standards from EPA and the Department of Transportation. The docket is likely to be overrun with statements for and against the regulation that would make cars and light trucks 30 percent more efficient in 5 years.
ROCKET, man

Copenhagen talks ready for take off: 5, 4, 3… 0
Posted 5 days, 11 hours ago By Geoffrey Lean Suddenly -- and just in the nick of time -- next month's Copenhagen climate conference is starting to gain momentum.
hedging on a pledge

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets 4
Posted 5 days, 15 hours ago By Jonathan Hiskes Provisional targets could let the Obama administration work around the Senate roadblock and bring pledges to Copenhagen, a top negotiator says.
Of price and men

Making buildings more efficient: looking beyond price 5
Posted 6 days, 1 hour ago By David Roberts The market for building efficiency is snarled with market and behavioral failures that prevent price signals from getting translated into action. Instead of merely raising prices further, policymakers ought to look into ways to correct some of those failures.
Carbon fixated

Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Enlightenment thinking 0
Posted 6 days, 12 hours ago By Gar Lipow Carbon Fixated has now a exposed a far greater scandal than "Carbongate." It is time to expose the fraudulent religion that worships Issac Newton, who was even fatter than Al Gore, and his silly assertions about gravity, not to mention the meaningless babble of incantations called calculus.
Jobs we can believe in

Merkley wants Senate jobs bill to help finance building efficiency retrofits 5
Posted 1 week, 1 day ago By David Roberts Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met with the chairs of six committees that might have some hand in developing the clean energy bill. The question at hand was whether the bill should be pushed back in favor of a short-term focus on finance reform, jobs, and the deficit. Though John Kerry argued vigorously that the clean energy is a jobs bill that won't grow the deficit, it looks like he lost out and there will be some kind of standalone jobs bill in the interim. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) is now advocating that any jobs bill include support for building retrofits to create jobs and reduce energy bills.
A Walk Through the Week's Climate News

The Climate Post: You heard it here first—Copenhagen a success 0
Posted 1 week, 2 days ago By Eric Roston A week of anticlimaxes saw President Barack Obama conducting a less-than-exuberant swing through China, the international community conceding a binding climate treaty at the COP-15 negotiations in Copenhagen, and U.S. lawmakers postponing to the spring of 2010 consideration of climate policy -- even as talk of a legislative "plan B" surfaced.
NYT: U.S. Chamber has not expressed support for any proposals to cap emissions 0
Posted 1 week, 2 days ago By Peter Altman John Broder has an illuminating story in today's New York Times, "Storm Over the Chamber" discussing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's climate crisis and how Thomas Donohue's style exacerbates it. Tellingly, the story begins with an anecdote that suggests where the U.S. Chamber gets its tin ear.
Nobody knows nothin'

Reflecting on the lameness of my profession 11
Posted 1 week, 3 days ago By David Roberts For the past few weeks there has been a flood of news about the Copenhagen climate talks and the clean energy bill in the U.S. Senate. Standing in that flood it's easy to get caught up in the atmospherics of frantic action and constant crisis. But step out for a while and it becomes clear just how much of the "news" consists of people who don't really know anything guessing: what things mean, who's thinking what, what the future holds.
Copenhagen is not Kyoto 1
Posted 1 week, 3 days ago By Ned Helme The most common and widespread criticism of the Kyoto Protocol was that it did not require major developing countries like China and India to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and the burden for reducing emissions fell largely on richer nations, like the United States and the European Union. Those concerns will be alleviated in Copenhagen, where a high-level policy agreement is expected to ensure that developing countries take on more responsibility for cutting emissions and paying for programs to do so.